Welsh Journals

The Gospel According to C. H. Dodd Robert Pope Charles Harold Dodd was probably 'the greatest and most influential British New Testament scholar of [the] twentieth century'. The son of a dissenting Wrexham schoolmaster, he proceeded to the Congregational ministry following a first in Classics at Oxford, research into numismatics and Christian epigraphy, and theological training at Mansfield College. A three year pastorate at Warwick came to an end in 1915 when he was called back to Mansfield as successor to James Moffatt. Dodd's flair for the Classical languages and his research into early Christian history, both pursued with a rigorous and apparently brilliant scholarship, made him the obvious choice to become initially Yates lecturer in, and then Professor of, New Testament. This was the first step on a career that would see him succeed A. S. Peake as Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester in 1930 and become the first incumbent of the newly united Norris-Hulse Chair in Divinity in the University of Cambridge in 1935. In fact, Dodd became the first free churchman to occupy a Divinity Chair at the ancient university. Dodd's contribution to all aspects of New Testament interpretation was immense. Very few outside that country come to the attention of German New Testament scholars, but one of the most important in the twentieth century, Joachim Jeremias, said of Dodd's work on The Parables of Jesus1 that 'in this extraordinarily important book the attempt has been made for the first time with success to relate the parables to their situation in the life of Jesus, and thereby to open a new epoch in the interpretation of the parables." A short time before the appearance of this book, Dodd became involved in an interesting and promising (though ultimately futile) project hatched under the auspices of the theology section of the Guild of Graduates of the University of Wales. Committed to providing easily accessible but thoroughly contemporary theological work in Welsh, it was decided to produce a series of three volumes for which D. Miall Edwards, the prolific professor of Systematic Theology and the Philosophy of Religion at the Memorial College, Brecon, would act as editor.4 Edwards drew up an outline of contents for all three, and work on the first, to be called Yr Efengyl yn ei Pherthynas a Meddwl a Bywyd (The Gospel in its Relation to Thought and Life), began early in 1927.5